


Jump 137

by veritascara



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Bad Wolf, Dimension Cannon, Dimension Hopping Rose, F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 05:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4168098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritascara/pseuds/veritascara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The number of realities Rose Tyler has crossed in her search to find the Doctor again feels nearly endless—until a single jump changes everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jump 137

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allegoricalrose (SilentStars)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentStars/gifts).



> A very happy birthday to my dear friend and almost-twin allegoricalrose! I hope this little piece of unapologetically shippy drivel brightens your day. And many thanks to Chocolatequeen and fardareismai for their mad beta skills!

_Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,_  
_Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;_  
_When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,_  
_Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:_  
_Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,  
_ _And fright him as the morning frightens night!_

_~ "To Hope" by John Keats_

*******

"Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be," she affirms, nodding her head. She takes one last sip from her water bottle and places it back on the nearby table.

"Connection online," her colleague states. "I'm certain this is a new one you've not tried before. You're good to go, Rose. And good luck!"

She attempts a weary smile, but at this point it's all for show. They've been at this for weeks now, with no indication that they're getting any closer to their goal and only a promise of forever to keep her going. Eyes open, she reminds herself, and before her waning resolve to keep searching wears thin, she braces herself and slams the small yellow button.

She gasps for breath against the sudden squeezing sensation, like being pulled through a tiny hole, and the unnatural, eerie blackness of the Void. _What color could possibly darker than black?_ she might once have asked. She now knows the truth. Mere seconds or long hours later (she never knows which) she stumbles back into reality.

A punishing cold sucks the remaining air from her lungs, and a blinding light forces her eyes to slam shut against her will. To land in an unknown world with her eyes closed is to flirt with death. Looks like it's going to be one of those days.

She wraps her arms around herself to fight the chill. For an entire minute, she cannot bear to open her eyes again, so she tries to discover what she can about her surroundings using her other senses. She knows she must be in London; she always lands in London—or at least where it ought to be or once had been. But the air smells crisp and fresh, unlike anything she's ever encountered in the city before. Under her feet she feels and hears a telltale crunch that she supposes shouldn't be too surprising, given both the cold and the glare. Snow. She's standing on a thick layer of the stuff. And as for her ears, all she can hear is the lament of the wind and a trumpeting sound vaguely reminiscent of school trips to the zoo as a child.

Nothing adds up. Where the hell is she? She forces her eyes to squint against the brightness and is greeted by a vision of endless rolling plains of pristine snow, dotted by a few rogue trees. In a hollow about a hundred metres away, a small herd of majestic animals she has only ever encountered in museums grazes on clumps of yellow grass sticking up through the white.

"S'gorgeous," she breathes.

New. She is somewhere new. No death, no destruction, no swarms of people—just herself and untouched nature. She wants to enjoy this so much, but to do so without him beside her, without his hand filling hers, feels wrong. A deep ache fills her belly, and tears spring to her eyes.

*******

_As they walk through the blue doors he releases her hand, and she shuffles her way to the jump seat, staring at nothing while a few errant tears create rivulets of mascara down her cheeks. He isn't looking at her. He stands at the console with his back to her, working the controls with methodical precision. Is this it? Is he going to take her home and leave her back where she belongs, stupid ape that she is? She's always hated that term, but it feels more appropriate than ever right now. She hides her face in her hands, not wishing to see if his face is full of anger or regret or even pity after what she did._

_The TARDIS flies smoother than she's ever felt before, the dim green light of the rotor pulsing to the rhythm of its steady up-and-down motion, the heartbeat of a ship she thinks she'll never understand. With a soft thud she feels them land, and a couple minutes pass before she hears the banging of heavy boots walking across the grating towards her and feels the weight of a warm blanket she's never seen before being draped around her shoulders._

_"Come on," he says. His voice is commanding but gentle. She hears no condemnation in it._

_She lifts her golden-brown eyes, cool with drying tears, to meet his blue, and finds warmth in their depths and an outstretched hand waiting to take hers. She doesn't want to go out. All she really wants to do is run to her room and hide, to curl up underneath her duvet and mourn for the father she'd never known before, for a day which both did and did not exist, and for a universe that almost disappeared, all because of her. But she doesn't. She nods her assent, places her own hand into his, and rises to follow him out the doors._

_The cold, a cold that sends a chill deep within her bones, hits her immediately, and she pulls the blanket tighter about her shoulders with her free hand. Wherever they are, it is dark, a dark deeper than ordinary night. A thousand unfamiliar stars shine overhead, and where the soft band of the Milky Way should be, she find the colorful clouds of a magnificent nebula. As her eyes adjust, she takes in the landscape around her. An endless sandy beach extends to her right and left, and she lets out a squeak of surprise when she realizes that directly in front of them looms a wave far bigger than most buildings she's encountered back home. A single second of instinctive panic passes before she realizes that it's not moving—it's frozen—and everything she can see is what remains of a great ocean or sea._

_He grips her hand tighter, and to her left she hears him inhale as if he's not taken a breath the whole two minutes they've stood here._

_"Woman Wept, also once known as Carinas-2, located in the Nebula AG-42 on the far reaches of the Andromeda Galaxy. It contains a single continent, which from above looks like a woman mourning, surrounded by vast ocean. Originally a lush planet with a thick, oxygen-rich atmosphere and a tropical climate covering nearly the whole continent, a rogue gas giant came too close and flung it out its orbit, dooming it to wander and causing massive storms and tidal waves which froze in an instant when the temperature plummeted. Storms are gone now, just the waves left. Residual heat from the planet's core is protecting us from instant death."_

_His lecture ceases, and after a moment she braves a single question. "Were there any people here?"_

_"Nope. Never a one, just an uninhabited paradise."_

_"Oh," she mutters. "It's beautiful."_

_"Yeah," he chokes out._

_Turning her face to meet his, she finds his eyes dark and hungry. She's seen that look only a few times before, the look that says that she is the sun, the one thing that keeps him from freezing in a universe that feels so very cold._

_"Why here?" she asks._

_He looks away again and answers, "Tropical planets are everywhere. Worth a quid apiece, they are. They grow, they evolve, they eventually die in fire. But sometimes, sometimes the world ends but doesn't end. The ending makes something new, something beautiful, something that lasts forever . . ." he trails off. "The end is the beginning, even when it requires a few tears along the way."_

_What words can she conjure up that would be adequate to respond to that? So she simply whispers, "Thank you."_

_He flashes a smile at her, that smile, the one that stretches all the way across from one overly-large ear to the other, and pulls her into a tight hug. A smile finally creeps across her own face as she is enveloped by his warmth and breathes in the scent of supple leather._

_They spend a few minutes wandering along the waves, climbing to their crests and surveying their endless undulations. But all too soon the cold numbs her fingers and toes._

_"Inferior human physiology," he tells her with a smirk._

_"Don't you just love it anyway?" she teases back._

_"It's fantastic," he murmurs._

_With a blossom of hope filling the aching pit that had taken residence in her heart, the two amble back to the TARDIS._

*******

"This is Control. What is your status?"

The message breaks into her reverie, and she shakes her head to clear it. "Everything's secure here, Control. No hostile activity observed. I need a few minutes to gather data."

"Copy that."

The connection goes silent again. She dons a pair of warm gloves kept on her person for such emergencies and pulls the temporal analyzer out of her pocket. Assessing the date and timelines of each universe has provided them with invaluable data regarding exactly when the phenomenon of the stars disappearing begins and what its impact will be. But today she wants to use it nearly as much to satisfy her own curiosity, and while it reads her surroundings she gazes at the graceful trunks, shaggy fur, and elegant curved tusks of the animals before her. Are they mammoths? Mastodons? She wishes she remembered enough from school to know the difference, but biology was never her strong suit. What they are is magnificent, brilliant, and a hundred other words she can almost hear his voice say across the dimensions.

One of the young lopes around the group with awkward, infantile strides before returning to hide between its mother's legs, bringing a fond smile to her face as she compares its antics to those of her clumsy little brother. She just might have to add adorable to that word list.

The compact gadget in her palm beeps, and she shades the screen with her hand to try to read it better. _Estimated date: 22 April 15,729 BCE. Margin of error ± 7 d._

“Blimey!” she exclaims and coughs out a laugh of near-disbelief. She's seen other worlds be months or even a few years off from each other, a testament to the shifting nature of time, but nearly eighteen thousand? This isn't just a world where the evolution is a wee bit behind; she's landed right in the Ice Age. She hasn't truly time traveled like this in ages. Her mind fills with a sense of wonder she thought she'd lost in a white room two-and-a-half years back, and for just a moment the strain of her mission and the increasing numbness in her extremities melts away.

*******

_She's thoroughly knackered. They just spent the entire day tracking down and subduing a lone alien hiding out in some old London warehouse. Without turning around, she starts shuffling towards the corridor, the foremost thought in her mind how quickly she can get herself into a warm bath._

_"Wait!" she hears him call behind her and turns to face him._

_"What is it?"_

_"I'm sorry."_

_Baffled, she scrunches up her nose at him. "What have you got to be sorry for?"_

_"About the buckets. I . . . well, I should have been more clear. Didn't mean to put you in harm's way any more than necessary."_

_She smiles wide and laughs a little bit at his apology, but then she sees it, hiding behind his chocolate eyes and confident stance—that bit of vulnerability that she knows by now drives his every move, the tightrope he walks between clinging to her for dear life and fearing that at any moment she may shatter to pieces, or worse, that he may be the cause of her demise, whether directly or not._

_Her expression softens into pure affection. "Come here," she tells him, and as they step together she wraps her arms around him._

_"Before you go to bed, can I take you somewhere? Just for a few minutes. I promise it won't take long."_

_She pulls back and rolls her eyes at him. "Sure, it won't, but I'm game anyway."_

_"Brilliant!" he replies, beaming at her._

_She is struck with the thought that this is not his usual flash-a-grin-and-act-manic-to-divert-the-conversation-from-veering-into-more-serious-territory expression, but that there's something deeper behind it, along with a healthy dose of pure joy. His happiness is infectious, and she follows him back to the console, pushing buttons and pulling levers as he bids while he dances gracefully around the controls._

_"Ah, here we are!" he proclaims, when the TARDIS lands with a jolt which nearly throws her to her knees. Instead of bundling her out of the TARDIS in a hurry, he gazes at her thoughtfully for a moment._

_"Bit chilly out there. You're gonna want a coat."_

_"What? Have you landed us on Hoth again? You know that didn't go over so well last time."_

_He grimaces at the mention of a particularly disastrous vacation attempt in which they had most definitely not landed at the intergalactically renowned ski resort he'd intended and had instead found themselves in the midst of a battle that resembled a particular film she'd seen as a kid a bit too much for her liking._

_"Er, nope, nothing of the sort! Just a bit cold, this place! Not at all like that. This is much, much better. Just the thing after a long day of running. You're gonna love it!"_

_"You're barmy, you are!" she declares before turning towards the corridor once more to fetch her black coat, only to find it conveniently laid across a nearby strut. She shakes her head fondly at the TARDIS's pampering and follows him out the door._

_The prehistoric landscape that greets her eyes makes her gasp in awe. All around them tower massive arches and spires of stone. The light of the setting sun paints everything in bright hues of orange, pink, and gold, including the gently lapping water winding its way amongst the rocks a few metres away. But perhaps the most intriguing sight of all are the creatures that resemble great airborne manta rays, as best as she can tell, which swoop overhead._

_Though he's standing just to her left, she realizes he has yet to say a word or offer any description of the place they are currently in._

_"Where are we?" she ventures._

_"Klaxatonia-7," is all he offers._

_"And what are they?" she asks after another quiet minute passes._

_"They have no name and never will. By the time this planet is discovered by sentient beings, they will be long extinct, and those who do find it have little care for paleontology."_

_"Oh." She senses that he is working through something important in his mind and ceases her chatter, choosing instead to drink in their surroundings until he's ready to tell her whatever he has to say . . . or not._

_"How long are you going to stay with me?" he asks, breaking their companionable silence, and she turns her face to look at him again. His own face is suffused with both affection and certainty of her reply in equal measure._

_"Forever," she answers without hesitation. It is a truth, a fact, an unbreakable law of the universe. They are and must always be, even in the face of worlds and species which come to an end. They always continue on._

_A beaming smile fills his face at her confirmation. Her own radiates the complete peace and contentment washing over her and seeping into her very soul._

*******

"Transmitting temporal data now. You're never gonna believe this," she states into the comm. device, the barest hint of a smile edging into her voice.

"Got it. Are you sure that's right?" the voice on the other end asks, astounded.

"Positive. I'll tell you all about it when I get back."

"Ready for the return jump?”

“Initiating return sequence,” she replies, replacing the temporal analyzer in her pocket and programming the dimension cannon transmitter once more.

A low growl and a stealthy movement in her peripheral vision startles her, and she freezes instinctively. Needing to know what she's facing, she turns her head slowly to her right. She is certain that her heart skips a beat. Maybe two.

A great, grey wolf emerges from behind a scrubby bush a mere twenty feet away and begins stalking towards her. Her mind races with panic. How did she not see it before? Does she have time to program the sequence and jump before it gets to her? She doesn't dare take her eyes off the beast. What if she sets the program wrong and lands somewhere awful, or worse, somewhere she can't return from at all? She has stood proud in the face of the universe's most fearsome villains; will she die today at the hand of nature? Her questions are irrelevant; in seconds the wolf reaches her.

It does not pounce.

It, no she, she feels certain the wolf is a she, although she does not know why, plants herself in front of her and stands tall and still.

Powerful, unflinching golden eyes stare into her own—a matching set. Her fear melts away. She allows herself to breathe again, and her body returns to shivering merely from the cold. Memories of another lifetime flood her mind, and two dangerous words spring to its forefront, two words that mean the universe to her.

_It's a link between me and the Doctor. Bad Wolf here, Bad Wolf there . . . It's telling me I can get back!_

She could swear the wolf smiles at her—an acknowledgement of kindred, a terrifying sight to behold. She smiles back, her face splitting wide with a joy she never knew she could feel again. With a laugh, she finishes programming her return and presses the button.

The return trip is nothing. She lands on the floor of the sterile laboratory and falls to her numb hands and knees. Two members of her team rush to her side.

"What's wrong? Are you all right?"

"What happened? We worried when you didn't come back immediately. What did you see?"

A strange sound meets their ears, and their confusion only grows when they realize she is neither crying nor moaning in pain. A sweet, bubbling, joyous noise rings in their ears: she is laughing. She rolls to her back and continues to laugh until tears stream down her cheeks.

Finally, her oldest friend approaches. He takes her small, light hand in his own dark one. "What did you find out there, babe?"

"Hope," she replies, her breathing finally slowing to normal. "I found real hope."

*******

_Four Years Later_

"Wake up, sunshine! Today's the day! It's ready! Let's go. Let's go!"

A glaring light and her husband's insufferable enthusiasm breaks into her fatigued slumber, and she groans and pushes her tangled blonde locks out of her face to glance at the clock on their nightstand before flopping back down on her pillow. "It's half five in the morning, you idiot. Why are you even awake? And have you forgotten that some of us currently have an increased sleep requirement?"

"Oh, yeah. I suppose there is that," he answers, chastised. "She just woke me up to say she was ready. That's all."

"Really ready? She can take us to the stars now, yeah?"

"Yep." His face radiates such an almost-fatherly pride, she can't help but return his infectious grin despite the early hour, and she realizes there's no way she's going to be able to get back to sleep after this news.

"Fine," she concedes. "But I've got to use the loo and shower first."

"Need any help?" he asks with a suggestive grin and a waggle of his eyebrows.

"You wish!" She laughs as she saunters towards the ensuite, still yawning but turning back to shoot him a smile with her tongue between her teeth anyways.

As expected, the shower ends up taking much longer than originally planned. Neither of them complains.

After they've finished, he rushes to prepare for their trip while she dresses and applies a bit of makeup. When she steps out into their small back garden, she finds the sun just beginning to make itself known on the horizon. Everything appears rosy and golden and new. She locks the door behind her, sucks in a deep breath, and makes her way around the neglected flower pots to the rather dilapidated-looking shed in the corner. Biting her lip in anticipation, she pulls the handle and steps inside to find him standing tall in the center of a spotless, brightly lit room. She's never seen it like this before, and she gasps in happy surprise, rapidly taking in the shimmering golden roundels, several plush red seats complete with safety belts, and an immaculate console with modern-looking, perfectly ordered controls.

"She's beautiful! How did she get so much done so fast?"

"She's a big girl now, and from this point on her growth will be nearly exponential, especially when we're home and parked near the rift. Just think, in a week we could have our own squash court!"

"And what would I do with a squash court?"

"Well, um, play squash or . . . anything! I suppose we could tell her to make a swimming pool first. Floating about is always great on the old joints—those loose ligaments."

"I dearly miss the library," she confesses.

He inhales deeply and nods. "Me too. Me too."

The two of them find themselves staring at each other for a moment longer than is comfortable before he clears his throat and speaks again.

"So, anywhere in time and space, where do you want to go?" he asks.

She can see his heart, open and unprotected behind his eyes. Her face lights up, and she opens her mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. All the possibilities suddenly feel daunting. Past or future? Earth or alien planet? Something nostalgic, maybe? Does this universe have a New Earth with applegrass? Or should they go for the exciting unknown? It's all a bit dizzying.

But in the midst of the chaos a single, quiet memory from a complicated date blazoned indelibly in her mind comes to light, and she knows it's the right choice. She walks to the screen and types in the destination, date, and time herself.

Then she turns back to him and announces, "It's gonna be a bit cold out. You'll want your heavy coat. Be back in a mo'."

He examines the location and date and stares after her in confusion, but he doesn't ask any questions and simply waits for her to return, her arms laden with winter gear. He helps her into the thick, warm peacoat, hat, and gloves, throws his own coat over a railing, and then gestures to a nearby open seat.

"Your throne, my lady."

She laughs in response, plops down into the chair, and straps herself in, groaning with delight at the sudden blissful comfort the cushions give her aching lower back.

“Thank you, sweet girl,” she murmurs at the ceiling.

Watching his joyful dance at the controls makes her eyes misty. He has worked so hard to enjoy the slow path, but this, this is truly his element. The ride is smoother than any she's ever experienced before. Perhaps the youthful ship is more steady than her ancient mother, or perhaps she's being mindful to take extra special care of her passengers for the time being.

After the TARDIS sets gently down, he pulls on his coat, and she dashes in front of him as fast as she can manage, offering her hand to lead him out the doors and into the nearly blinding glare of daylight and soft, powdery drifts of snow.

"Well, you were right about the chill; it is a bit nippy here. Suppose I'll learn to appreciate this blasted wool coat yet!"

She laughs in response. It's taken him a long time and painfully numb extremities on more than one occasion to accept that he just can't maintain his temperature the same way he used to.

A trumpeting sound in the distance diverts his attention from her face. "Oh, that is beautiful! Why, I haven't seen these in years! The woolly mammoth, also known as _Mammuthus primigenius_ , graceful foragers of the Ice Age plains. I rode one once, you know. Not the most comfortable of animals to ride a thousand miles across the Siberian wastelands, but what a trip that was . . ."

He continues to clasp her hand and natter on about the animals in front of them for what feels like several minutes, and she tries to follow his ramblings. But all his words blend together, and she loses herself within the memories of what once was, and the journey that brought her to what is and what could be. He senses her pensive silence and becomes quiet and serious.

"Why here?" he inquires.

They've discussed much of what they went through during the years they were separated, both the many sorrows and the little joys, but some things hurt too much—were too easy to bury or leave in the past in favor of lighter moments. Many of the trips she took between universes fit that category. And while this trip didn't fall amongst the painful memories, by any means, something had always held her back before now.

"There was a jump, number 137, it was. I'd been on so many by that point. Some were awful; nearly all were discouraging. But on that jump, I ended up here—well, essentially here—in a universe somehow running far behind all the others. And that was where I remembered."

He grips her hand tighter, as if he could eradicate every painful memory with his soothing touch. "What did you remember?" he asks softly.

"I remembered what it was all for, all those jumps back and forth and months spent searching for you. I remembered what it was to see something new, something wonderful and amazing. And I remembered what it was like to do that hand-in-hand with you. That one stupid jump gave me the courage I needed to face dozens more, to keep going even when it felt like the universe was turning to hell around me. It gave me hope. That's why. That's all."

She wants to tell him about the wolf, but she doesn’t. Something within her tells her she shouldn’t. It almost feels as if she physically can’t bring her mouth to form the words. Anyways, the wolf is the past. The future is theirs alone.

The admiration and love burning in his eyes could set a forest ablaze. It's hard to take in her current emotionally charged state, and she looks away for a minute, letting all the words he's not saying fill her to the brim with an overwhelming peace and joy.

A question hangs between them, a question neither has dared to ask again despite the years they've now spent together. But today she knows it is hers for the asking, and she turns towards the man on her left, her face glowing and radiant with the brilliance of her smile.

"How long are you going to stay with me?"

He doesn't answer, not right away, even though she aches to hear the word she once gave him given back to her. He gives her the other three words every day. Instead, he pulls her close, turning her back against his chest, and buries his lips in her hair. He presses a kiss to her temple and wraps his arms around the growing roundness of her belly, where their daughter squirms contentedly against her father's hands. She's not certain, because she can't see his face, but she thinks she feels a single cool tear land on her forehead.

"Forever," he finally whispers in her ear.  "The Doctor, in the TARDIS, with Rose Tyler. Forever." 


End file.
